I finally got around to posting my 3 news songs: You Are The Reason, Boomerang and Just A Man. You hear them from the “songs page” on the colartz website. The lyrics are also there, too.

OK, so I will come clean and say it is me singing again. If you can just get past that, and imagine the songs are covered by a talented singer, then maybe you could find a way to enjoy them . Mind you, I do owe any vocal listenability at all to Melodyne, and for that I big time thank the chaps at Celemony.

2 are just me and my guitar, and on the third I play base and have used a drum riff from Cakewalk’s Session Drummer. OK, I know it is repetetive, but I never was much cop at figuring out drum lines.

Having done these, I think I am going to go and have a lie down

Hoping you enjoy them: Tip – in all cases the best bits are near the end

Well, I have been hard at it this last week, getting down another 3 songs for entry into the UK Songwriting contestUK Songwriting contest, which has a closing date of end June every year. I really don’t know why I do it, because i am never happy with the results of what I create, or even where i come up in the results . I guess it just provides the pressure I need to get on a finish a few things..

I am a great believer that making songs is 95% about rewrites, and rewrites, and rewrites…. and having the strength to ‘kill your darlings’ – which is how they describe the (necessary) process of whitling down ideas to only the best ones.

Anyhow, the 3 songs I put in this year are : Boomerang (a fun Indie track about how you have to ride your luck, a bit in the Hoosiers area); You Are The Reason (a song about how special someone is to you, particularly your children) [previously titled 'You Are My Stardust '], and Just A Man (well, not my best effort lyrically, but I like playing it on guitar).

I will be posting the songs on my site in the next few days. These are only ever rough demos to get the song heard (and maybe then covered!), and not finished items – because I don’t profess to be able to create any final masterpiece! I figure I am old enough now that I shouldn’t don’t need to be so embarrassed about my (pretty poor) singing and lyric writing any more. All I can say is thank goodness for Melodyne, which is a FANTASTIC piece of software. Without it, I would never post anything that had my singing on it.

Right, back to work doing skins and screenshots for Mixtikl.

I occasionally get the chance to put down a song, and if I get that far, then it can be quite helpful to get some feedback on it. I have entered a few of my songs into the Song of The Year competition, and also taken advantage of their “critique” service where they rank the song in 10 categories (e.g. emotional impact, technical eval, marketability etc). Now, I did once get Runner up for Oct 2006, which was quite exciting, but I was rather pleased to get back a critique on 2 of my recent song entries. The first, “Pear Shaped”, I got 10/10 in one category and 9/10 in 2 categories, better than ever I have got before. I have not finished this song, though, so have not uploaded it. The other song, Beat the Blues, I only entered by chance, and it got 10/10 for 3 of categories, and 9/10 for another 3. I especially liked the closing comment “This is well conceived and composed. The ideas are presented in a clear and professional manner. There is nothing to change. Exceptionally worthy work! This is an exceptional song and performance with formidable potential.” I thank the reviewer (whoever you are) wholeheartedly for that comment, as it really made me smile and feel good. All I need now is a great cover – now wouldn’t that be nice !

Yes, I had to pay for the review, so you need to discount something there, but it is nice to get praise some times ! I have found Song of the Year to be very good at customer service and response, and they get top marks for that. The critique service also represents good value, even though I am still not quite certain what it really tells me – but it does have motivational value, which is perhaps the main thing.

On the song competition front, it is always hard to tell what the value of a competition is. I always tended to assume that songs that won competitions would end up making it really big – but it doesn’t really seem to be the case. I also note that although Song of The Year lists many very famous songwriters/artists/music industry people as judges, I am pretty certain the majority of them only get involved in judging the years winning song from a shortlist – so don’t expect to enter and have your song heard by Norah Jones (one of the listed judges)! If you get to be a monthly winner, then you might do, but I think they get a lot of entries.

I don’t know if I am the only one, but I have great difficult in figuring out which category into which to enter a song. Is it pop, is it rock, country, blues or whatever? Maybe I have no sense of style, but maybe it is made hard so as to encourage entries (and payments) in multiple categories.

Another thing I would like would be to see the release form you have to sign to get the song sent out to industry contacts (assuming your song is a winner, of course) . I always feel a little nervous only seeing that kind of thing only after the event (assuming I should ever be that lucky). Surely there is nothing to hide…..

Well, it would be nice to be a winner one day, and, even better, to have a song covered and properly produced. Every song I do I think I get a little better (maybe 2 steps forward, one back), so maybe one day I will get there….

Epilog: None of the songs were in the top 5, but I again got a credit as Suggested Artist runner up.

About a week ago I finished a new song I had been working on for a few months. The idea and lyrics went through more changes in direction than there are bends on the Monte Carlo race track. Will reveal more in due course, but it is a great idea, is very rocky and, if I am brutally honest, it is also probably the first song that I have written that has real global hit potential. The song is “You Can Do It“. My 6 year old song keeps singing it, so maybe it has appeal for the younger audience .
Now it is done I can stand back from it, and I would love to hear it covered. I won’t post it here for a while as I have given it to a friend who has passed it on to a charting band. I want to see what happens there first. I would also have to re-record the vocals before I posted it, as my singing is not far short of terrible….